In struggling to keep her hand upon his mouth, she had turned back the deep, open collar of his blue shirt till his brawny neck was exposed nearly to the shoulder. Espying on that neck a certain white mark, contrasting with the ruddy weather-browned skin, she gave a half-stifled shriek, like that with which a dumb animal expresses its rapture of recognition; and taking the man’s head in her arms, pressed it to her bosom, rocking herself to and fro, while she wept and murmured over him with an inexplicable tenderness, by which he was at once astonished and alarmed.
For a few moments, and while the negress’s back was turned, she held him tight, but released him when the other re-entered the room, exacting from him a solemn promise that he would meet her again at an indicated place, and adding that she would then confide to him matters in which, like herself, he was deeply interested, but which must be kept religiously secret so long as he remained in the island.
Slap-jack, after he had finished his rum-and-water, rejoined his comrades, a more thoughtful man than he had left them. To their jests and inquiries he returned vague and inconclusive answers, causing Bottle-Jack to stare at him in solemn wonder, and affording Smoke-Jack another illustration of his theory as to the wilfulness of feminine steerage in a sea-way.
Célandine, on the contrary, walked through the town with the jaunty step and bright vigilant eye of one who has discovered some treasure that must be guarded with a care proportioned to its value. She bought no more trinkets from the storekeepers now, she loitered no more to gossip with sallow white, or shining negro, or dandy coloured man. At intervals her brow indeed clouded over, and the scowl of which it was so capable deepened ominously, while she clenched her hands and set her teeth; but the frown soon cleared away, and she smiled bright and comely once more.
She had found her boy at last. Her first-born, the image of her first love. Her heart warmed to him from the very moment he came near her at the store. She was sure of it long before she recognised the mark on his neck—the same white mark she had kissed a thousand times, when he danced and crowed on her knees. It was joy, it was triumph. But she must be very silent, very cautious. If it was hard that a mother might not openly claim her son, it would be harder still that such acknowledgment should rivet on him the yoke of a slavery to which he was born by that mother, herself a slave.